Featured in Redfin article - Living Room Organzation

Check out the recent Redfin article we were featured in: 25 Living Room Organization Ideas for Every Home

If your living room is cluttered and chaotic, it can be tough to relax and spend time with your family or entertain guests. Your living room can become even more challenging to use if you have a large family or an abundance of belongings. But by taking a few simple steps to organize your space, you can turn your living room into a haven of peace and relaxation.

Read the full article here: 25 Living Room Organization Ideas for Every Home | Redfin

In addition, we have some additional ideas on the subject to share.

Home organizing boils down to a simple principle: you either need more storage, or you need less stuff (or both!). And there is no place in the home where that principle is more applicable than the living room! This is where we live which means that it is often in a state of flux. To keep your items in their proper place, approach it mathematically. How much space do I have? How much stuff do I have? Can I make that equation work? Leverage vertical space and don’t be afraid to mount things on the wall to keep them from becoming clutter. Vertical space is perfect for storage and displaying keepsakes.

Form and function reigns supreme so keep the details in mind. Wrangle all those pesky cords in a sleek bamboo cord container. Identify one spot for your remotes and make sure everyone in the house gets the memo. And think about unique solutions like how your ottoman can double as a coffee table to minimize excess furniture.

When the emotional connection to our things gets activated, focus on building the muscle of "letting go." As a professional organizer specializing in zero waste, we help our clients realize that "letting go" does not have to mean going to the landfill! It means rehoming your beloved items so that others can enjoy them as much as you once did. This realization can make it easier to declutter and purge. And whatever you do, remember that out of sight does not mean out of mind, so no stuffing your drawers full of things that will never see the light of day again.

Emmy's Cradle

Moving is a major life transition, which can become an emotional process as you rediscover items of sentimental value. It’s an opportunity to access the items coming with you on this journey, and a chance to let go of things that can reach their next highest good. 

Faced with a cross country move, from San Francisco to New England, Emmy C. enlisted the support of Next Highest Good to help her prepare and find a new home for an antique cradle that came into her life fifty years ago.  

When Emmy and her husband were expecting their first child in 1970, they were living in a no-frills military apartment while he was on active duty in Kentucky. One free day in Lexington, they wandered into a lovely antiques store, attracted by its window display of things from the past that probably had no place in their present. Suddenly they saw it: a dark wood rocking cradle on a raised wheeled base with an attached four-pronged canopy on which rested a puff of transparent netting. A few months later when their first daughter was born, a truck arrived and delivered in her bedroom that gorgeous cradle Emmy had fallen in love with back in Lexington - one of many wonderful surprises from her husband throughout their marriage. 

The cradle accommodated a second daughter a few years later and a long succession of house cats who all loved to hop in and sleep on its original horsehair mattress. It knew five other homes during the fifty years of their marriage.  

Fast forward to 2020. Emmy was living in San Francisco. Her husband had passed away. When she decided to return to familiar New England, to a tidy, compact house with absolutely no room for the cradle, she felt at a loss for what to do with this deeply meaningful, yet no longer useful item. What could she do with this beloved piece of furniture?

That’s where Lauren and Next Highest Good came in. Through a number of visits, Lauren grew a beautiful connection to Emmy and this cradle. She thought long and hard about its Next Highest Good. Then one day, as she was driving down San Francisco’s Fillmore street, she remembered a baby boutique she had visited when her own child was an infant. So, she emailed the store’s owner to see if she would have any use for the cradle. And to Lauren and Emmy’s delight, the owner was overjoyed about the idea of using Emmy’s cradle as a display case in her store. So, Lauren loaded the cradle into her car and dropped it off on Fillmore Street so it could live its Next Highest Good at Mudpie. 

And when Emmy comes back to San Francisco for a visit and misses her cradle, she stops by Mudpie to say hi. 

Organizing with Kids!

Keeping up with the kids’ rooms can be a serious task. And it’s no fun doing it all alone. Ever wonder the best way to involve your children in the decluttering and clean up process in a fun and meaningful way?

In this video, NHG Founder and Chief Expert Organizer, Lauren Winters West, partners with her son, Jaxon, to organize his beloved treasures. Lauren shares tons of valuable, zero waste tips and organizing tricks that any parent can use to organize with their kids! 

Here are our top 3 favorite best practices you’ll hear in the video:

1. Get started by making a mess.
   This is most often the kids favorite part! Pull everything out so you can identify, categorize and place all items together. Getting it all in one place will make it easier to decide what to keep, what to organize and what to give away to it’s next highest good. 
   

2. Include your kids in the process!
   Work with them to develop the organizing systems that work best for them. This provides an important sense of ownership and responsibility, and will help them feel more connected to their belongings. The more connected they feel, the more likely they are to take good care of their “treasures.”
   

3. Research the right spot for unwanted items.
   Donating, upcycling and recycling can be tricky, especially during the pandemic, but that doesn’t mean zero waste is impossible! Start by searching out places that are currently accepting items. Also, check out our “where to donate”  post or contact us to learn more about how we can do the donating for you.

As always, don’t forget to take a before and after picture so you can celebrate all your good work!

Home item donations during quarantine

Are you tackling more organizing projects while quarantined? Wondering where, and if, you can donate your goods to their next highest good? We got you covered! Here are a few of our favorite national and local resources.  

SF BAY AREA & LOCAL 

• SF Smiles: We LOVE this organization for so many reasons. Right now, they are looking for specific items so please be sure to read this through before contacting for donation. Chad, the founder, lists his hours for donation, which changes weekly and links to a google doc on his website. If you'd like to learn more about him and the organization, check out this interview we did with him in September.

• Buy Nothing. This is one of our favorite resources to get in the practice of a gift economy! Using the free platform provided by Facebook Groups, you can quickly get rid of things that are cluttering your space or save money by getting things for free... all while building community. Start by finding your local group.

• Post for a "no contact pickup" on Nextdoor, Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, LetGo and other online platforms.

• Check out this comprehensive list of Goodwill locations in San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin counties that are reopening along with their hours of operation!

NATIONAL

• If you have a box and a printer, you can get a prepaid shipping label and send your things off to Give Back Box. Click here to get a label. Bonus: shipping is free!

• Schoola is an amazing organization for donations. Fill a box with gently worn clothes, print a label and leave the box for the mail carrier. It’s that easy! They sort and sell your items for you and give 40% of the sales proceeds to your school or a partner cause.

For more zero waste organizing tips, tricks and resources, check out our latest lunch and learn video.

Immune Boosting Spring Cleaning

Spring is our favorite time of year for organizing, cleaning and releasing what you no longer need to its Next Highest Good. Decluttering offers a long list of mind-body-spirit benefits. This season we want to focus on the power of spring cleaning to boost our immune systems. 

It’s important to make your home space a sanctuary, not only for your mental, physical and emotional comfort, but also for how it can increase your resiliency and overall health. 

Here are 5 ways spring cleaning can help boost our immune systems:

1. Kills bacteria and allergens which lower our immune system

2. Reduces stress

3. Clears space and mind of clutter

4. Aids restful sleep

5. Improves mood and sense of accomplishment

Community Spotlight: Chad Christensen from SF Smiles

This month, Next Highest Good was lucky enough to sit down with local superhero, Chad Christensen, Founder of SF Smiles - an Inner Sunset based nonprofit organization that collects donations of new and gently used essentials for individuals and families in need throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

The philosophy of SF Smiles is about sharing the items in a community with those in need while also being sustainable. To SF Smiles, that means investing in our community while, at the same time, keeping as much as possible out of the dumps and landfills.

Read on for Chad’s tips for staying organized, the background story on his personal style and to discover ways you can support this incredible community resource. 

How did SF Smiles begin?

The idea for SF Smiles began in 2009 when I was watching a bunch of TV shows during the holidays and noticed a lot of charity drives going on. I began to realize that someone needed to make a difference in the community throughout the year and not just during the holiday season.  So I began to play around with the idea of having a central place for donations that was specifically geared towards the city of San Francisco and its community. Then I got together with friends who had the same ideas.

Our plan for SF Smiles was hatched in a coffee shop over pie.

Can it get any more San Francisco than that? 

At first, we planned to hold monthly drives that would be geared towards a specific community, and over the years we’ve experimented and changed how we do things. At first we took EVERYTHING you could think of and our reach was really broad. We had a donated warehouse for awhile and when that was no longer available, we scaled back, sold our delivery truck and moved the donation center into our garage about five years ago.

SF Smiles has evolved and currently we are focusing on helping families get things that they need to take care of their children.

The donations we ask for now are specifically geared toward the needs of families. We have been a 501(c)(3) nonprofit since 2011 and have been helping families for 8 years now, on a small budget and at NO charge to the families. 

Sometimes we take a break from our regular activities to focus on a specific need that comes up. The huge fires up north are a great example of this. SF Smiles experienced the biggest increase in requests for assistance after the devastating fires in northern California in 2018. We held donation drives to help these people. As a result, gathering supplies and gift cards in order to help those families in need brought a lot more visibility and community awareness to SF Smiles.

In 2019 to date, we have had:

• 700+ requests directly from families in need

• 200+ requests on the SF Smiles website for appointments

• 150+ Homeless Prenatal Program (HPP) requests via email

• 50+ requests through my personal FB messenger

• 130 messages through SF Smiles messenger

• 120 requests via text messages

• 21 SF Smiles email requests

• 139 requests from HPP requests via Google Docs

I try to document many of the donations through storytelling of the pictures I have taken. 

The philosophy of SF Smiles is about sharing the items in a community with those in need while also being sustainable. To SF Smiles, that means investing in our community while, at the same time, keeping as much as possible out of the dumps and landfills. 

Why does SF Smiles do this?

SF Smiles is bringing awareness to sustainability as well as giving back to our community. We reuse, repurpose and recycle as much as possible. If we didn’t do this - where would it all go? We want to keep it out of the dump.

We try to strip down items as much as we can sending the minimum to the dump. For example, expired car seats are stripped of their covers and cushions, which are used to replace dirty car seats. We encourage others, like artists, to use the leftover donated items for found art pieces, etc. Imagine if every program was able to be efficient in breaking down donations this way and so much could be kept out of the dumps and reused?

What is the most rewarding part to you?

The most rewarding part are the smiles on the families’ faces when they begin to realize that ALL of the baby and kid’s items in the garage -- which were items they badly needed at the time! -- are COMPLETELY free and they can take whatever they need. 

It’s really amazing to see the parents kind of melt because they are so surprised and in awe that they have entered a space where a lot of their needs will be met immediately.

It’s pretty humbling to see all of the kids smiling so big because they have a lot of toys to choose from here. It’s more than just one toy to choose from but rather so many boxes that they can sort through to find something that really speaks to their heart.

The gratitude that the parents and families have for this program is pretty apparent but it is also wonderful to see how the program impacts the donor families.

People are thrilled to have a place to donate things where they know they’ll go directly to another family. I love how so many different communities come together and help one another. 

Where do you get the inspiration for your style?

I have been inspired by watching other programs do similar things to help out the community. I am definitely learning as I go!

I wanted to create a fun playhouse-designed storage area in our garage that’s filled with things that are ready to go for the families. About 95% of the items in the garage were donated. So I wanted to have an environment that is like a hip consignment shop or modern swap meet where everything is free and that is fun for everybody involved.

At night we change up the lights to make it fun.

Peace and love is the basis for our garage decorations and for SF Smiles. 

Many of our donors follow us on Facebook for all the stories that we tell through photos, and we often get feedback about how amazed they are at how organized our garage is.

As for my personal style, ever since high school I’ve always wanted to do things differently. I always told myself,  

“Don’t be like everybody else. You are your own person. You are your own individual. Be yourself. Be unique. Be spontaneous.”

What are your best tips and tricks for how to stay organized?

The first step in getting organized is clearing out what you don’t use anymore.

Staying organized means being mindful about what you buy, collect, and bring into your home.

Don’t collect odds and ends and hang on to things you might use “someday.” The more stuff you have, the more stuff you have to deal with every day. Don’t let it pile up.

How can the community support you?

Currently we are focusing on collecting the following most highly requested items: toys, blankets, coats, car seats (less than 5 years old!), infant carriers, bikes, strollers, backpacks, socks, diapers, gift cards and towels. Check www.sfsmiles.org for updates to our collection list and donation hours. At SF Smiles we like items that are “ready to go” so they can be quickly handed off to a family. That means: clean, undamaged, with loose parts (e.g., puzzle pieces and crib components) and hardware secured in a repurposed bag and directions included for items that require assembly. We LOVE it when our donors sort, organize and label their donations before dropping them off!   

We need volunteers to help organize the SF Smiles space. Specifically, volunteers to sort, organize, and check items such as toys, breast pumps, strollers, etc. We can also use help delivering and picking up items, and we would love to have volunteers who can haul off the items to the dump. It would be wonderful to have help with creating and promoting our fundraising efforts, such as having social events during Happy Hour or finding sponsors willing to match donations. Our goal is to raise at least $100,000 this coming year. We have been running SF Smiles using minimal donations and our personal contributions for the last eight years and would love to take it up a notch with that budget. We would welcome funds to cover the cost of insurance for the SF Smiles Space, as well as for our day-to-day operations. 

As for our plans for the future, we would love to have a larger space -- with the rent and insurance donated by a generous community member -- for families to come in and “shop” more easily. We are also very interested in expanding our philanthropic efforts, such as providing scholarships for needy children to do extracurricular activities, retreats, etc.